In Natalie Goldberg’s new book Old Friend from Far Away, she gives a writing prompt – Write for ten minutes about what you don’t remember.

It’s an interesting idea – to figure out what gaps you have in your memory. When I started answering the prompt I came up with lots of weird stuff:
1. I don’t remember most of 7th and 8th grade when I went to a tiny Christian school. I don’t remember why I don’t remember, but my mom tells me I was beaten up by two girls there almost every day -so maybe that’s the problem.
2. I don’t remember my first high school football game, even though I went to many of them.
3. I don’t remember the first time I ate ice cream, or cheese, or a carrot.
4. I don’t remember my first trip to a museum or the first time I stared at a painting.
5. I don’t remember the first thing I put away in my new house.

This exercise opens me up to see where I have gaps and to wonder why I don’t remember these things. Sometimes, of course, I don’t remember because I was too young; sometimes I don’t remember because I didn’t know it was going to be important; sometimes I don’t remember because it hurts. Exploring those spaces of absences can be lovely.

Yesterday in my creative writing class, one of my students said he couldn’t remember the phone call that told him a good friend had died. That’s something to push into, to explore, to write about.

All you writers, all you bloggers, write down what you don’t remember. I’d love to see where that takes you. It’s a challenge for you.

Natalie Goldberg has been one of my favorite writers on writing. I read her book Writing Down the Bones when I first started writing, and it got me to slow down, just enough, to get some words on the page. And I find her writing ideas, coupled with those of Anne Lamott, to be the driving forces of my own writing life.

At Powell’s right now they have a beautiful video about Goldberg. In it she says, “loneliness has been sort of my black dog through all my life, and I think it’s one of the things that urged me to write because when I’m writing I feel like I’m talking to someone, that I’m communicating.” As simple as that idea is, this morning hearing that really struck me because she gives exactly the reason that I write – to find other people. Isn’t that why we blog?

Her comment makes me want to get a bouvier, one of those huge black dogs with all the fur. But I live in a townhouse and already had to send one large dog to live with my parents, so I guess the kitties and I are on our own for a while.

So I have two cats, myself, an imaginary Bouvier that is my writing, and all of you to stave off the loneliness that is this life. Thank you.

My friend Sarah and I were having a conversation yesterday about how it’s so easy to become negative, and I know that’s true for me. So today, in the spirit of positivity – not the sappy, fake kind – but the kind that embraces that most of the stuff we go through in this life – no matter how truly painful or glorious – isn’t important, I post these random thoughts on new stuff I’ve found and old stuff I’ve known – stuff that I love.

This new book by Amanda Marcotte – The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. I’m planning to put this one on the TBR read list because the Powell’s Review promises:Offering suggestions for how to deal with more than 50 sticky situations regularly faced by women, It’s a Jungle Out There arms readers with the rhetorical ammunition necessary to stand up to a culture that can be downright hostile to feminists. Although she strives to show readers how to spot and resist sexism, Marcotte also acknowledges that it’s not always advisable to lecture coworkers about the patriarchy or pick a fight with your wingnut uncle. Her strategies range from the passive (simply extricating yourself from an inflammatory conversation) to the very active (systemically eviscerating your opponent’s argument, as she does in her chapter about abortion myths). And when it comes to the dreaded wedding-bouquet toss, she suggests the obvious: a well-timed bathroom break.
Now if only I can find books that do the same thing for racist comments and for comments about other people’s, or my, religion.

Shawn McDonald – a great singer/songwriter that my yoga teacher introduced me to. His song “Beautiful” . . . just really is beautiful. It’s been a while since I found a song about God that rings true, not simplistic or trite. And then, his new album Roots is lovely, too.

So now, a challenge for all of you. Make a list of your favorite things and post it here – or post it on your own blog and mention that post here – and I”ll draw a winner from all the posts and send a copy of one of these books – all my favorites – to the winner:The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. LewisPossession by A.S. ByattTraveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
or House by Tracy Kidder
Post your thoughts by Saturday, April 12th to qualify for the book giveaway.

I look forward to seeing everyone’s favorites. And I hope you enjoy thinking of them. Anybody adore “raindrops on roses” or “whiskers on kittens?”

I’m off to church – one of my other favorite things.

Andi

P.S. Thanks to Stefanie (and her cat) at So Many Books for my win of Margaret Atwood’s The Door.

I don’t talk like one anymore. I don’t live there anymore – but I will always think of Appalachia, specifically Western North Carolina, home. I lived there from age 4-14, and most of my sense of what life should be like – full of slowness – comes from that culture.

When I need comfort or ease or just sheer simpleness, I look to Appalachia (pronounced with short A’s as in cat, not as in lay – only sociologists that aren’t from Appalachia pronounce it that way). Most recently, I’ve been looking into ghost stories from there (yes, Joe – ghosts again), because the Smoky Mountains are full of those stories. I’m looking for good collections that address ghosts or spirits or strange phenomenon, so if you know of any, let me know.

In Appalachia, I also know the appreciation for hard work – both manual labor and the simple duty and diligence it takes to create anything – a piece of writing, a great casserole of macaroni and cheese, a carefully carved walking stick. There’s something there that says the work of the hands feeds the work of the mind. And I know this in my own life because it’s when I’m sewing that I often feel the soft calmness that allows ideas to dance forward.

Right now, I live a bit away from this home of mine, but there are places I can find it. Photos, stories, and in this lovely journal Appalachian Heritage that is published out of Berea College in Kentucky. In their latest issue, they feature the work of singer/songwriter/author Billy Edd Wheeler (if you visit the site, you can even hear some of that music that always hold me still as if I’m in a cradle) as well as poetry of Wendell Berry and some great other writing. It’s definitely worth a read and a subscription.

And just to get you feeling like you’re there, here’s are a couple of photos of my beloved Smoky Mountains.
From a site about Cades Cove, not far from where I was raised.
From Camp Montvale, an adventure camp, in Maryville, Tennessee.
Andi

P.S. Today is the last chance to enter my giveaway for Between the Tides, so go ahead and post away.

Today, I’m having a day. Nothing bad, nothing good . . . just a day. And on days, I have trouble thinking. I don’t process well, so forgive me if this post is a bit disjointed.

Today, I got information from a Google Alert about “Ghosts” for the book I’m writing. (Anyone have thoughts on ghosts that they want to share?), and on The Great Consolidation, I found this amazing video by Laura Marling. I have never heard of her until now, but her voice reminds me a Ingrid Michaelson meets Kate Nash – never a bad thing. You can learn about her and watch her video “Ghosts” here.

Then, as I was doing my usual perusal of my ever-growing list of blogs, I found mention of the Early Reviewers program from Library Thing. Oh man! Free books. I’m giddy, so I signed up. (Thanks to Eloise for the tip.)

So then I kept bouncing around the web and found this stuff – check out Estella’s Revenge – their newest issue is great.

And then finally, some giveaways. Check out Nymeth’s page, Stainless Steel Droppings to win a Brain Froud poster, visit Heather whose system of picking winners amazes and astounds, see Wendy’s page to see a wise use of recycling as we approach Earth Day, to win Atwood poetry visit Stefanie at So Many Books, etc. — there are so many giveaways that I feel like I’m losing track, and in fact, I think I have because I think I told someone, via comment, that I’d post about their giveaway today, and I’m not sure if I have. So if I made that promise to you, please let me know, and if you have giveaways, brilliant thoughts, or are just plain feeling random, please post away.

In a final thought, I’ve started Stardust for the Once Upon a Time Challenge, and it’s great. I also got, for the same challenge, my copies of Atwood’s Penelopiad and Winterson’s Weight. Now if only I could get time to read them.

But really, this book is fascinating – the writing is excellent, the story captivating, and the ideas it tussles with are ones that all writers (and readers) need to come to a peace with. (In that sense, Lying seems to be a bit like I Think We Need to Talk about Kevin, which I admit to not having read, but that seems to be complicated and troubling in all the right ways. Check out this glorious post from Tales from the Reading Room to see what I mean.)

Slater’s Lying is the story of her childhood where she battles continually with epilepsy and a great propensity to tell lies. The book is a memoir of childhood and the ways we talk to ourselves about our experiences. In the end, it’s also a book that engages with the very questions about the nature of nonfiction – where the line between truth and fact sits – and does so in a fair, honest, but fascinating way. I can’t say much more without giving away the book, but if you trust me at all, trust me when I say it’s worth the read.

Here’s a snippet to whet your appetite:I wanted to make my mother happy, that should come as no surprise. She had desires, for a harp, for seasonal seats at the opera, neither of which my father could afford. She was a woman of grand gestures and high standards and she rarely spoke the truth. She told me she was a Holocaust survivor, a hot-air balloonist, a personal friend of Gold Meir. From my mother I learned that truth is bendable, that what you wish is every bit as real as what you are.
I have epilepsy. Or I feel I have epilepsy. Or I wish I had epilepsy, so I could find a way of explaining the dirty, spastic glittering place I had in my mother’s heart. Epilepsy is a fascinating disease because some epileptics are liars, exaggerators, makers of myths and high-flying stories. Doctors don’t know why this is, something to do, maybe, with the way a scar on the brain dents memory or mutates reality. My epilepsy started with the smell of jasmine, and that smell moved into my mouth. And when I opened my mouth about that, all my words seemed colored, and I don’t know where this is my mother or where this is my illness, or whether, like her, I am just confusing fact with fiction, and there is no epilepsy, just a clenched metaphor, a way of telling you what I have to tell you: my tale. (5-6)

This book spins round and round truth, circling in, pulling up for perspective. It reminds me of the riddle about the two dwarves/elves/gnomes at the two doors – one door leads to death, one to life. One dwarf always tells the truth, one always lies. The riddle is to figure out who to ask about the doors. . . the riddle is itself a question of truth.

Slater’s book, in addition to being one of my favorite reading experiences ever, has also given me one of my favorite teaching experiences. Once after a composition course at Santa Clara University, a student emailed me and said that she so appreciated the fact that I had trusted that the students could grapple with the complexities of truth and that I had shown her that truth is complicated. She went on to say that she challenged another teacher with this idea the next semester, much to the teacher’s chagrin. While I cringed a bit about being quoted, me – an adjunct, to a full-time professor, the larger part of me, the part of me that knows that truth is slippery but that we have to do our best to catch it in a loose net of words so that our readers can trust us, smiled a really big smile and filed that email into a special place in my heart and my hard-drive.

Testimonials

The manuscript review Andi provided was thorough, punctual, and a great value. Not only did she find key points for revision, but she provided encouragement, and following the review offered further advice about the writing process. After this last revision I’ve been able to query agents with improved confidence. Thanks, Andi!

Lynn Sikkink

“Andrea helped me revise a lot of my work. She was a great editor who worked patiently with me and really tried to understand what I was trying to communicate. She is a definite hire!”

“Andi was a great help in preparing my resume for distribution. While I greatly appreciate her writing skills, I was worried that she would not have the ‘business’ perspective that I needed. That worry went unfounded and Andi provided both an analytical and literary perspective to the review process that made my resume much stronger.”

Testimonials

The manuscript review Andi provided was thorough, punctual, and a great value. Not only did she find key points for revision, but she provided encouragement, and following the review offered further advice about the writing process. After this last revision I’ve been able to query agents with improved confidence. Thanks, Andi!

Lynn Sikkink

“Andrea helped me revise a lot of my work. She was a great editor who worked patiently with me and really tried to understand what I was trying to communicate. She is a definite hire!”

“Andi was a great help in preparing my resume for distribution. While I greatly appreciate her writing skills, I was worried that she would not have the ‘business’ perspective that I needed. That worry went unfounded and Andi provided both an analytical and literary perspective to the review process that made my resume much stronger.”